REBECCA BARNETT | The Roanoke Times
The Reuben at R.T. Smith’s Fine Delicatessen is full of corned beef, melted Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing, and is served on rye bread.

Today, Inside Out featured a review of R.T. Smith’s Fine Delicatessen on Campbell Avenue in downtown Roanoke.

The owners, Rob and Tracey Horacek and Craig Smith, aimed to set it up with a New York deli-style feel. It serves Boar’s Head brand meats and cheeses and Roanoke Bagel Company bagels.

After sampling its sandwiches, desserts and breakfast options, our reviewer, Nona Nelson, called it a “fine choice for a fresh, quick breakfast, lunch, or early dinner.”

Are you a deli fan? Have you been to R.T. Smith’s? Share your thoughts!

Read the full review.

Hey folks, Lindsey here. Ahhh, it does feel good to get back on the Fridge Magnet blog after a week and a half away. I’ve missed all the banter and brainstorming that goes along with it. Thanks again to Nona, who kept us entertained and informed while I was away. Without her, I’d have had to put the blog on a temporary hiatus in order to fill in for my editor.

Of course, just because I wasn’t blogging doesn’t mean I wasn’t eating! In fact, I experienced a very exciting opportunity on Sept. 20, when I got to judge the rib cook-off at the Big Lick Blues Festival at Elmwood Park in Roanoke. I’ve been dying to tell you guys about it.

This is only the second time I’ve judged food since I became the food writer for The Roanoke Times. The first was a chocolate contest. You might be surprised to learn that I would much rather make myself sick on pork ribs than cookies and fudge.

These judging experiences are rather interesting; the rules all depend on the particular contest. At the chocolate festival, I was allowed to chat as much as I wanted with the other judges. So we found ourselves talking about such things as the subtle hints of cinnamon and chile pepper in a piece of fudge. At the rib cook-off, no talking was allowed. So much for me advising my co-worker, music writer Tad Dickens, who said he knows way more about the blues than the bbq.

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Lindsey here. I’m into my second week of helping to fill in for my boss, who just had a little bundle of joy. In fact, three Roanoke Times co-workers became parents within about 3 days last week!! There was an entire Roanoke Times wing at RMH!

In addition to helping with editing duties, I’ve been cooking up a storm — chili and chicken pie for new parents; Swiss steak for us, which we cooked in the pressure cooker.

Anyway, I plan to pick the blog back up full-time next week. I will post later this week with the Swiss steak recipe and a few observations from judging the rib cookoff at the Big Lick Blues Festival this past weekend.

Meanwhile, I had to chip in my 2 cents’ worth on Nona’s wonderful blog postings. Thanks a bunch, Nona!

I’m excited about the un-perforated dough because I make little pigs in a blanket several times a year. I love them with Lil’ Smokies and dipped in both ketchup and mustard. Mmmmmm!! I’ve never had a party when they didn’t disappear in a flash.

I’d like to try the new dough in some kind of foldover with a mixture of browned ground beef with onions and other seasonings. Like an English pasty.

As for chiffon cake, I’ll bet it’s delicious and not too fattening. Maybe you could make it and frost it with light whipped cream and strawberries or mandarin oranges. It’s beating the egg whites that’s a pain, but I’ve done it for angel food cake and if you have a cold metal bowl, it’s actually a cool cooking experience.

Here at the Fridge Magnet desk, I receive a great deal of information about happenings in the foodie world in Southwest Virginia. Not all of these rise to the level of a blog entry or a column, so I have created a list of tidbits that will from this point forward appear at the right of your screen.

See it there? How do you like that?

Please note that this feature is by no means the end-all-be-all of food events listings at The Roanoke Times. For all of your cooking classes, wine tastings and other wonderful happenings, please be sure to keep reading every Thursday’s issue of Inside Out.

This is just my way of highlighting a few events each month and making sure that some things don’t completely fall between the cracks. You may very well see an event listed on my blog and elsewhere in The Roanoke Times or on Roanoke.com. But that’s okay — duplications are far better than leaving something out entirely.

Feel free to offer me any feedback on this feature as it progresses. And thanks, as always, for taking a look at this blog!

For our wedding anniversary last night, my husband and I wanted to go somewhere nice. So we wandered down to 202 Market, which is just about the most beautiful bar in Roanoke.

Since we’re trying to save a little dough for our big trip to Busch Gardens next weekend (woo hoo! Big Bad Wolf!), we weren’t in the mood to drop $100 or more for dinner. We decided instead to either order bar food and appetizers or split an entree at the bar.

Lots of people seem to have an aversion to eating at the bar, or an aversion to splitting an entree in a fancy restaurant, as if that would be tacky. But my friend Megan taught me that it feels more casual and acceptable to do that at the bar. She and her husband do it all the time, and they get to try out all kinds of meals in nice restaurants without dropping a wad or blowing the buttons off their pants.

At 202, Howard ordered a beer and I had a half-price lemongrass martini (it was Ladies’ Night), which consisted of lemongrass-infused vodka, vanilla simple syrup and fresh lime juice. Refreshing and delightful. We started with the $5 mushroom tempura snackie, which has to be one of the best appetizer deals in all of Roanoke — you get a whole bowl full of crispy, meaty wild mushrooms in a savory sauce.

File photo by Sam Dean/The Roanoke Times

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Those crazy kids over at Pace have launched a new line of salsas and were kind enough to send us samples here in the Features department at The Roanoke Times.

My anal side immediately took over, so I arranged the salsa with chips for taste-testing and passed out score sheets to all of my hapless co-workers. It’s another Lunch Ladies, on the cheap! Oh, apologies to Kevin Kittredge, the one dude who did take part in the test.
Here are the results of our unscientific poll:

Pace Pico de Gallo
Company description: “Inspired by the classic, with chunks of hand-picked jalapenos, onions, and diced tomatoes and a touch of fresh cilantro.”
Average score (out of 5): 3.1
Comments: “Strangely sweet and sour with a hot aftertaste. Very chunky.”
“Not like the real, fresh thing, but pretty spicy.”
“A little tangy and sweet.”
“Not bad for factory salsa”
“Average restaurant-style salsa.”

Pace Salsa Verde
Company description: “Hand-selected jalapenos and chunks of tomatillos, seasoned with a splash of lime and spiked with smoked Spanish paprika.”
Average score: 2.4
Comments: “Too vinegary, but I’m not a fan of salsa verde to begin with.”
“Weird smoky flavor. Good spice.”
“The smokiness is nice. It has a nice heat. There’s a strange canned aftertaste.”
“Can’t get past that pukey color.”
“Kind of bland and a little bitter, but probably good on a taco.”

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Roanoke Times photographer Stephanie Klein-Davis sends me e-mails on a regular basis with story ideas about food, cooking or traveling. Like me, she seems to have one of those topics on the brain at all times.

Yesterday, she sent me an idea that piqued my interest immediately. Where are the best salads in Roanoke and the New River Valley?

Obviously, if you’ve got the freshest ingredients at home, then perhaps that most delicious salad is on your own dining room table. But if you are too hot or tired to make dinner yourself, where do you go for a great salad when you’ve really got the hankering?

Restaurant salads don’t have to be healthy. In fact, much of the time, they are not — particularly if they are loaded down with fried chicken tenders, cheese, egg, bacon and all that good stuff. But for the purpose of this blog question, let’s throw healthy right out the window in favor of delicious.

I can think of two of my favorite salads right off the bat.

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You would pretty much have to be in a coma to be unaware of this season’s bumper peach crop. (My apologies to anyone who is actually in a coma — sadly, you are missing out on some good eating.)

At any rate, WFIR, WDBJ-7 and The Roanoke Times have all run stories this week about how last year’s dismal peach crop has been rejuvenated into a boom crop this year. Our friend Amy Hanek, a frequent reader of this blog and a blogger herself, has also posted a couple of entries about peaches this week.

After an early warm spell and late frosts nipped last year’s stone fruits in the bud, the stars aligned this year. Warm weather during pollination season, moderate rainfall during the fruits’ developmental stages and Mother Nature’s tendency to push for a comeback the year after a loss have put us in Peach Heaven.

You can find the best peaches, in my opinion, down at your local farmer’s market. My husband brought home one of the biggest peaches I’ve ever seen — it’s nearly the size of a softball — from Ikenberry Orchards this week.

If you’ve bought a big mess of peaches, it’s possible that you’ll get your fill of raw ones and need to cook a few up before they are overripe. Amy’s peach crisp recipe, my mom’s cobbler recipe and peach pie are all wonderful ideas. But I’ve been thinking about some less common recipes for peaches, too. Maybe something with a savory punch instead of dessert. I scoured a few cookbooks and located what I believe are some devilishly good-looking peach recipes.

A few of them are ridiculously easy, too. Take a look and see what you think. And, as always, if you’ve got a great recipe you can share, fire away!

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What does your work refrigerator say about you….and your co-workers?

Well, from the looks of the fridge in the Features department at The Roanoke Times (I took this picture this morning), it says at least one thing: We bring Lean Cuisines to work, but we never eat them.

Notice the TWO Lean Cuisines that have been permanently encased in ice in the upper right hand corner of the picture. I can’t even tell if they were sesame chicken or macaroni and cheese or salmon or what.

Now, Wendy admitted that one of the Lean Cuisines was probably hers. Who brought in the other one?

Okay, I admit. It was me.

This is cold, hard evidence that while I often have good intentions about eating a healthy lunch at work, the Lean Cuisine goes untouched in the freezer while I make my way to Alejandro’s, the market building or some other spot for tasty grub.

Of course, one of these days I’m going to be too busy to run out and I’ll remember that I have an emergency frozen dinner. Anyone got an ice pick?